First automobile to arrive in city amazed residents

Frontiers

Posted: Wednesday, September 29, 1999

KAREN D. SMITHGlobe-News Feature Writer

Editor's note: This is the ninth installment in a monthly series of stories examining frontiers in history, American and local. Our focus this month is on frontiers on the road, from the automobiles themselves to the vistas they opened for travelers.

On the world stage, Henry Ford might be billed as a cultural magician.

He made the horse disappear.

The idea is a rip-off from a turn-of-the-century joke.

But history reveals an American audience amazed, thrilled and, yes, skeptical of the sorcery that propelled a carriage without horses.

The first modern marvel rolled into town in 1903 or 1904, depending on if you believe an Amarillo Daily News article from 1912 or another from 1914. Though they disagree on what order the first two cars arrived here - depending on when the cars were bought and when they arrived - they do agree on the drivers.

Dr. W.A. Lockett owned a one-cylinder Cadillac, "the auto arriving here early in the year 1904," the May 5, 1912 article said. "The spurty little 'chug-chugs' of the small craft sounded strange to the ears of Amarillo's people. It came almost too soon upon the heels of the innumerable cattle - herds whose foot-prints scarcely erased from the streets and squares.

"It is told that Dr. Lockett was indeed 'monarch of all he surveyed.' He had opened a new era, and the people while viewing the machine with something of question, at the same time felt as did the first man in the community with an attack of appendicitis. 'We have something that our neighbors have never had.' "

Lockett, "the nervy physician," took all who were brave enough on joy rides.

"The wonder that a machine would be propelled over the trackless ground without a horse attached had not at that time ceased to be a wonder to many people in this section of the state," the story reported. "They felt that the auto was not a 'sure thing,' and it might possibly pass without having made good. Appearance upon the street of this trap caused wonderment and usually attracted a crowd."

Charles Tolleson had the other "first" car in Amarillo, a one-cylinder Oldsmobile. He, too, attracted crowds and daring passengers with his automobile, "which could be called such only by courtesy even by its manufacturers, when compared to their present magnificent vehicles...," the 1912 story said.

Early drivers often found themselves walking more than riding. Cars could be relied on about as much as a stubborn horse. Mechanically, they regularly refused to go, or got mired in muddy, rutted dirt surfaces.

"No long distance stunts were attempted, and it is stated by one who was fully cognizant of the actions of the cars and their owners that none of them dared go further in a day than could be walked in the same day back to town...," the 1912 story said

Still, Amarilloans wanted wheels. The 1912 story reporting the first local drivers' first foibles also noted a present-day stable of at least 365 to 400 cars "of all the better makes" in town, not to mention a taxi-cab service.

"The cars first brought to Amarillo were guaranteed a speed of from five to ten miles per hour," the story said. "The great machines now doing service here have a speed of from thirty to seventy miles per hour, fully rigged."

Across the nation, Americans sputtered, chugged and crashed into the automobile age as they learned to drive cars, some with rudders rather than steering wheels, some with multiple pedals on the floor. The driver faced a variety of mechanical arrangements.

Buster Pool, 99, remembers when his father, an Overland model owner, found himself behind the wheel of a Model T, because the Overland was in the shop.

"He'd never driven a Model T," said Pool, who grew up at Levelland and now lives in Amarillo. "He went two miles out to pick mother up. He pulled up to the gate and hit the wrong pedal. He run through that barb-wire gate hollering, 'Whoa!' "

Amarillo's car fever

Automobile manufacturers and dealers raced to find ways to promote their cars, literally. Manufacturers pushed their vehicles for land speed records or endurance fetes like climbs up Pike's Peak, then announced their phenomenal successes in large, boldly written advertisements that filled the newspapers of the 1920s and '30s.

Dealers and organizations brought in racers to speed away with customers' hearts. The Panhandle Auto Fair Association staged Amarillo's first racing meet in 1909, and many racing events were to follow.

"Some of the swiftest cars in the United States are being secured for the scheduled events, and it is suggested that the speed of one mile per minute will be looked upon as intolerably slow at the incoming events on the new tracks," an Aug. 12, 1911, Daily News editorial declared. "Two miles per minute will be the goal held up to the gaze of the ambitious ones, with every promise of achievement."

Motorcycle dealers, such as T.M. Caldwell, Amarillo's first dealer of the two-wheeled wonders, also gave their models a racing road test to impress buyers, according to his son, Amarillo resident T.M. "Red" Caldwell Jr.

The senior Caldwell sold Indian Motocycles - yes, they were dubbed moto rather than motorcycles - from 1909 to 1920, ending his distributorship just before Caldwell Jr. was born in 1921. The elder Caldwell continued to sell Willard Storage Batteries, Bosch Magnetas - ignition devices used on farm equipment and other machines, and the Delco Light Plants that generated electricity for many a rural home before electrification, Caldwell Jr. said.

Folks didn't just flock to see the new models, they stampeded to see Hudsons and Hupmobiles, Overlands and Oaklands, Dodges and Durants, Studebakers and Stars.

More than 1,700 people crowded into Cooper-Irvin Motor Company, site of the first Amarillo-Panhandle Automotive Association Automobile Show and Style Show on its first day. Police and fire department officials ordered the doors closed, so that almost 2,000 were turned away, the Feb. 24, 1921, Daily News said.

The problem repeated itself on the second and third nights, with at least 1,500 refused admittance each evening, the Daily News reported.

"From the beginning, we knew it would be a success, but it is the measure of success that startles us," stated a letter from the association printed in the Feb. 25, 1921, Daily News. "We know that the attraction just closed will prove ample prediction for the automobile and style show as a regular annual event in the future. We realize that our greatest handicap during the present show was the lack of adequate housing facilities, and we believe the citizens of Amarillo will see to it that these are provided before the date of our 1922 attractions."

The space problems raised cries for a city auditorium, and the shows continued for several years.

Everybody was acquiring wheels, and everyone wanted to know who bought what. At least, that seems the purpose of a regular Sunday News-Globe column, "Flashes from Auto Row," which appeared in the mid- to late '20s.

Most of a broadsheet page was consumed with tidbits that began something like this one, from the June 6, 1926, edition: "Bob Sweeney has made it a habit of his to buy Packards. He purchased his third last week from the J.W. Timmons Motor company."